Social Security
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Fixing Social Security Mistakes
Most people start receiving Social Security benefits at the wrong time. Beginning Social Security retirement benefits early can cost you and your family tens of thousands of dollars of income compounded over your lifetimes. A significant percentage begins receiving benefits when they first are eligible at age 62. Only a small percentage waits until age […]
The Best Stock Market Indicator?
Investors search for the ideal indicator or signal that tells them when to change their investment portfolios. Here’s the latest candidate, from the blog Philosophical Economics. It’s not a traditional market indicator at all and doesn’t even use any of the traditional stock market metrics. The indicator is the ratio of the total amount of […]
A Lesson in Stock Market Signals
The major stock indexes had negative returns for January. That presents a good opportunity to review market indicators and how not to use them. A well-regarded and -known indicator is the January signal or January barometer. It is what many investors look for: A simple, straightforward indicator that requires little analysis and has a solid […]
The True Costs of Working in Retirement
More and more people say that they plan to work in “retirement.” A growing minority say they will never retire. I’m not opposed to that. There are good reasons to continue working after age 65 or any other age, even if it’s not full time work. Some people need the money. A few extra years […]
It’s What’s Priced Into the Stock Market that Counts
Periodically I try to make the point that forecasting the economy or an investment doesn’t matter unless you make the forecast both accurately and before it is priced in to the markets. Sometimes markets are surprised by events or changes. Other times markets are ahead of the curve, so the actual events don’t stir markets. […]
More on Stock Market Valuation – The Shiller PE Ratio / CAPE Ratio
I’ve been covering the recent debate about how high stock market valuations are with special attention to the Shiller P-E ratio, also known as the CAPE (cyclically-adjusted price-earnings ratio). The ratio uses 10-year inflation-adjusted earnings instead of just one year’s earnings to value the stock market. Advocates believe that historically it’s been very good at […]
A Bullish (But Not Too Bullish) Case for the Stock Market
For some time now I’ve been linking to arguments by stock bulls. I do this partly because my recommended portfolios have reasonable stock positions and partly because bearish arguments are easy too find and are overexposed. Investors need to see the opposing arguments. So, here’s a summary of bullish arguments from Barry Ritholz. As my […]
The Bullish Case for the Stock Market
It’s remarkably easy to find the case for selling stocks. It seems it’s always easy to make a bearish case, and perhaps that is why there are so many bearish newsletters. It’s easy to write that bearish marketing copy. So, here’s a compilation of bullish arguments. It points out, for example, that a year of […]
